Loose collective bound by creative passion

DIOKNO Pasilan is what The Rat Art Group calls their “pivotal person.”

About seven years ago, his primary aim as a multimedia artist was to discover who else was making art in his area, build connections with them and collaborate.

Building a loose collective, this became The Rat Art Group, including his neighbour Scott Fredericks, old friends Pippa Tandy and David Bromfield, and PJ Gregg, who laughs about the first time he crossed paths with Pasilan.

“When I met Diokno, he was sitting forlorn in the pub,” he said. “I was the finder of him. That was it.”

Together, the five creatives are putting on multimedia exhibition, Locus at Backspace Gallery, exploring memory, village life of the Philippines, travel, the repurposing of scrap and found materials, Ballarat’s car fires, consumerism and dystopian futures.

But one work by Bromfield, Postcards from Dad, doesn’t as much look at the wastefulness of now or the potential state of the future, it touches more on what could have been.

“It’s about postcards that my father didn’t send me in the war,” he said. “I’ve tried to create postcards that look like things that he said to me.”

Relationships are a big part of the exhibition for Bromfield, not just looking at the art he’s produced, but at the people he’s collaborating with in The Rat Art Group.

“Everybody here is connected to art. The reason I’m here is because I’ve known Diokno,” he said.

“They’re remarkable people, and they’re probably the most interesting artists in Ballarat because they’re dedicated, they do lots of other work than this… They run public art shows and a café called Ballarista…”

The act of creating, and its thought processes, are hugely important to surviving this life for Bromfield.

“If people aren’t creative, they’re doomed. It’s the only thing we’ve got to keep us alive and if you’re not creative and you have no resource, you cannot resist what’s coming,” he said.

Locus is on at Backspace Gallery from 10am to 5pm until Sunday, 1 December. Entry is via the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s main doors on Lydiard Street North.